1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cell imaging apparatus and method for imaging a cell group including a plurality of periodically moving cells.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, regenerative medicine for performing treatment by culturing specific cells, such as myocardium, skin, or large intestine, in a sheet form and transplanting these into a patient has been drawing attention.
When producing a cell sheet, such as myocardium, first, a small amount of cells are collected from the living body, the collected cells are induced to undifferentiated cells, such as iPS cells, and the obtained undifferentiated cells are cultured. Then, the obtained cells are induced to differentiate into myocardial cells, and the differentiated myocardial cells are arranged in a sheet form and are cultured. In this manner, a cell sheet is produced.
In the process of culturing the cells arranged in a sheet form as described above, visual observation using a microscope and evaluation are performed to check abnormalities. In the future, however, it is conceivable that such evaluation is automatically performed with the spread of regenerative medicine.
As a method for automatically evaluating the quality, abnormalities, or the like of a cell sheet, for example, a method of capturing an image of a cell sheet using a microscope and acquiring and evaluating the feature quantity of the image can be considered.
In the case of performing evaluation based on an image obtained by imaging cells, for example, in the case of a small amount of cells, the cells can be contained within the imaging range of one field of view. However, in the case of cells arranged in a sheet form as described above, the cells cannot be contained within the imaging range of one field of view. Accordingly, imaging is performed a plurality of times in multiple fields of view. Then, captured images obtained by performing imaging of a plurality of times as described above are arranged side by side to generate one composite image.